64 tips for using iOS 7 on your iPad & iPhone

From turning off parallax to mastering Apple's apps, we bring you our handy & useful iOS 7 tips, including 9 new tips for iOS 7.1

iOS 7 brings a whole new look and feel to iPads, iPhones and iPod touch devices. But, as well as the new look, Apple has introduced lots of new features with iOS 7, many of them not immediately obvious. iOS 7.1, which was released in March, also added further new features including new Siri voices, accessibility tools and Calendar options. Here, we share 14 new tips for iOS 7.1 as well as a whopping 50 iOS 7 hints and tips. There's bound to be a trick you've never tried in this list.

Above: A video showing a closer look at some of the new features in iOS 7.1 and how to use them.

iOS 7.1 hints & tips

1. Control your iPhone with your face

You can actually control your iPhone just by moving your head in iOS 7.1. Apple has added a new feature to accessibility settings in the update that means you can turn the device's front-facing camera into a switch.

To try it for yourself, go to General > Accessibility > Switch Control, and then tap the slider so that Switch Control is activated. Add a new switch by tapping Switches and then Add New Switch, and choose Camera.

You can pick what you want to use the camera for. Choosing tap, for example, means each time you move your head in the direction you've chosen you'll tap on the highlighted area on the screen. Choosing Home button means you can press the Home button just by looking to the left or to the right, choosing Siri will activate Siri, and so on. Give it a go!

2. Play YouTube audio in the background

You can play YouTube audio in the background in iOS 7.1, so if you're listening to a new song on the video streaming service and don't need to see the accompanying visuals you can go about other tasks without the sound being interrupted.

3. Open the most recent audio source from Control Centre

You can now discover which app is playing audio by swiping up on Control Centre. The last app to play audio will remain there, which makes for a handy shortcut to iPlayer, Spotify or similar. Just swipe up in Control Centre, and tap on the music source to open that app.

4. Turn off parallax effect on background wallpaper

If you are one of those who were suffering from seasickness due to the parallax effect on the background wallpaper, you can now easily turn off Perspective Zoom. Go to Settings > Wallpapers & Brightness. Now find the wallpaper you wish to use and when you have selected it tap Perspective Zoom: Off. You can trial it from the Move and Scale screen to see, or rather not see, the effect. This effect can still be turned of if you choose to Reduce Motion, another setting in Accessibility (see page 2 for more information).

5. Darken the colour of buttons & more in iOS 7.1

Perhaps you aren't too keen on the reds, blues, and greens around the iOS interface. You can make these slightly darker. Go to General > Accessibility > Increase Contrast > Darken Colours. As a result the buttons and pointers around the OS will appear slightly darker.

6. Make white less dazzling

You can now reduce the white point (which dulls the white elements on the display). Go to General > Accessibility and toggle Reduce White Point in General. The effect will slightly darken the screen.

7. Never miss a button

When Apple redesigned iOS it made the buttons less like buttons. Instead of tapping a symbol designed to illustrate open or close, you tap on the word open or close. Button Shapes in Accessibility brings back some of this interface functionality. Go to Accessibility and toggle on Button Shapes. Now any buttons will gain a grey shading around them, which will presumably not only make them easier to see if you have poor vision but may also be a more appealing option for other users.

8. View all your appointments in Calendar

You can now view your appointments for the next few days from the month screen in the Calendar app.

Previously if you tapped on a day you would be taken to a separate screen that showed the day view with any appointments, but the only way to get a view of your upcoming meetings was to turn your iPhone on its side to view the week in landscape mode. Rather than viewing each day's appointments on separate screens you can now tap through the days to see what appointments you have lined up while staying in the month view.

To view the calendar in this way tap the button with the box and two lines under it (next to the search icon) in the month view. If you don't select this view when you tap a day in the Month view of the Calendar you will be taken to a view of the appointments you have booked over the next few days, and you can scroll through them to see what's coming up.

9. View bank holidays in Calendar

Apple has now added country specific holidays to the Calendar in iOS 7.1. Previously we had synced with a calendar that gave us access to UK holiday dates, since the iOS 7.1 update we now have access to all the upcoming bank holidays in the UK, including some more random ones, like Battle of the Boyne, which is observed on 14 July.

10. Turn off Passcode

It's now slightly easier to access the setting regarding your Passcode in iOS 7.1. The Passcode Lock option was previously found in Settings > General. Now you can find it in the third section of options on the Settings page. Tap Passcode to go straight to Passcode options. Enter your passcode and you can make various changes like Turn Passcode Off or Change Passcode.

11. Change Siri's voice to female

Finally the UK Siri gets a female voice. To switch it over go to Settings > General > Siri. Then tap Voice Gender and choose Female.

12. Use the new male voice in Siri

You may have noticed that the Male voice has changed, too. If you don't like the new voice, see our how do I get the old Siri voice back article. There's a new male voice in Siri. Hold down the home button to activate Siri and ask it something.

13. Let Siri know you have finished talking

Hold the home button when talking to Siri and release it when you have finished to let Siri know when you have no more to say. We love this new feature, it's much easier to manually control Siri's listening time rather than waiting for the voice assistant to notice when you've stopped talking.

14. Let your iPhone 5s decide when to use HDR

The new HDR Auto setting on the camera will allow the app to automatically choose to use the HDR setting on only those occasions when it thinks it will be of benefit. This is a great bonus to those who frequently turn HDR on and off because they don't want to use the HDR mode all the time. It's also handy if you would normally keep both HDR and non-HDR shots on your camera roll but you'd prefer not to fill up your phone with duplicate images (you can set the phone to do this in Settings > Photos & Camera > Keep Normal Photo).

In addition to the 14 iOS 7.1 tips listed above, there are lots of tips and tricks for both iOS 7 and iOS 7.1 that you might not know about. Continue to page 2 to find out more about Multitasking, AirDrop, time stamps, call blocking and more.